Bringing together two topics of wide and growing sociological interest, The Body, Childhood and Society examines how children's bodies are constructed in schools, families, courts, hospitals and in film. Recognising that children's bodies are a target for adult practices of social regulation, the contributors show that children are also active in their construction, employ them in resistance and social action, and generate their own meanings about them. The editor, a leading sociologist of childhood, draws out the theoretical implications of this work, indicates the limits of social constructionism, and suggests new ways of thinking about the hybrid of material, discursive and collective processes involved. It will be a valuable text for social scientists interested in the body, childhood, schooling, the law, medicine and health.
Acknowledgements Contributors Childhood Bodies: Construction, Agency and Hybridity; A.Prout Embodied Being-(s): Understanding the Self and the Body in Childhood; A.James Childhood and the Cultural Constitution of Vulnerable Bodies; P.H. Christensen The Body as a Site of Contestation in School; B.Simpson Children, Parents and the Construction of the 'Healthy Body' in Middle Class Families; K.Milburn 'To Become Dizzy in Our Turning': Girls, Body Maps and Gender as Childhood Ends; S.Prendergast Re-Presenting the Child: The Muted Child, The Tamed Wife and the Silenced Instrument in Jane Campion's The Piano ; R.Frankenberg Faith in the Body? Childhood, Subjecthood and Sociological Enquiry; N.Lee Constructing the Bodies of Ill Children in the Intensive Care Unit; B.Place Index
